If you are a freelancer or independent contractor in any field, QuickBooks Self-Employed can help you stay prepared for tax time throughout the year. With your input, and by eventually understanding your way of doing business, QuickBooks Self-Employed will help you separate business and personal expenses as well as identify Schedule C deductions. If you need more guidance, or have loyalties to a tax preparer, you can invite them to sign-in to your account so their job becomes easier as well!

What makes it so special? Along with the tax readiness, QuickBooks Self-Employed offers tools that help you find and maximize deductions so you can focus on doing what you love. Yep, that means more money back in your pocket and more time to do what you do best.

By RuthAnn Hogue

You know you need a website, but you’re not sure whether you want to take the next step to make it capable of accepting payments online. After all, potential customers can fill out your contact form. Then you can call them back or send an email with a link or any other number of options other than closing the sale by collecting immediately.

Such an arrangement would never fly in a brick-and-mortar store. Intuitively, you know this is not the best option in the virtual world. In an era of instant gratification, businesses need to be able to serve up what’s on the menu before customers leave your store.

True enough, but doesn’t one need a merchant account to take online payments?

The all-in-one option

Let’s say you sell tech-related gadgets such as cell phones, chargers and accessories. They come in various brands, models, colors and sizes. Posting an information-only catalogue detailing what’s trendy and for sale can certainly pique consumer interest, but it can’t provide immediate results. For that, you’ll need to add a payment gateway.

Fortunately, many ready-made online store options are available, including GoDaddy’s Online Store. In addition to providing an online space to promote your gadgets, it will allow you to immediately close the sale by collecting online payment with PayPal and all major credits cards. By using this type of all-in-one eCommerce solution, you get a seamless way to collect payment. The funds you collect are transferred directly into your designated bank account. (more…)

The first website launched in December of 1990. Remember 1990? Paula Abdul had a number one hit with “Opposites Attract,” the number one movie in America was “Home Alone,” and you may have owned a pair of parachute pants just like your idol MC Hammer. Over the last quarter century, styles and tastes have come and gone. Just like fashion and culture, web design trends constantly change. Keeping up with all of these trends can be difficult for a small business owner. But why even bother paying attention to web design trends? How does web design increase your bottom line? Well, you’re not still wearing parachute pants, are you?

At Wix, we would argue that web design is one of the most important factors of a business’s marketing strategy. Why? Designing an intuitive and engaging experience for your customers increases your customer lifetime value (CLTV). This is a prediction of the net profit attributed to the entire future relationship with a customer. At the end of the day, a happy customer will lead to more sales and leads.

Lucky for you, Wix has been in the web design business for over a decade. Founded in 2006, Wix has over 96 million users on its small business management platform. With so many businesses across the globe using our services, we constantly search the Internet for the latest web design trends, bringing that information to our users. We have compiled a list of trends that will have an impact on website design in 2017.

In recent years, payment industry stakeholders in the U.S. have been collaborating to improve payments efficiency. A quest is underway to achieve the worthy goals of originating and receiving more payments electronically to reduce the average end-to-end costs of transactions and to enable innovative payment services for consumers and businesses. In the U.S., opportunities to improve payment system efficiency are especially significant in business-to-business (B2B) transactions, which include the invoice, payment and remittance detail.

With that in mind, give a hearty salute and wish a happy anniversary to the Business Payments Coalition (BPC), formerly the Remittance Coalition, which celebrates five years this month. The organization’s new name recognizes that its goal has broadened beyond simply facilitating the exchange of remittance information among B2B trading partners. It still seeks to foster adoption of electronic payments and remittances in the business-to-business environment, but its wider-ranging mission today is to improve efficiency of B2B payments across the end-to-end process.

The Coalition consists of organizations and individuals working together to promote greater use of electronic B2B payments and remittance data exchanges, as well as other ways to increase B2B transactions efficiency. Over the last five years, the Coalition has developed a plethora of tools and standards that address the various challenges that businesses face when using electronic alternatives to paper-based payment options. As the payments environment continues to expand and new electronic payment options grow, the Business Payments Coalition has continually expanded its efforts beyond remittance to lend a fresh perspective to overall payments efficiency. (more…)

By Karen Peacock
SVP and Small Business Segment Leader at Intuit

Great accountants don’t just take care of tax-prep and compliance issues. Numbers really do tell a story and today’s entrepreneurs are turning to qualified small business accountants to help drive success and business.

With the right accountant as a thought partner, you can get insights that deliver benefits to your business by analyzing company data and providing strategic advice in support of a wide range of business decisions. How? The major technology engines of the era — cloud computing, social, mobile and big data — are fueling a wave of consulting-based and advisory accounting services.

Sound too fancy for your small business? It isn’t. As the world becomes more connected, more data becomes available and accountants can access more through the cloud — the power of what that can do for you as a business owner will only continue to grow.

Tech-savvy Gen Y and Gen X business owners increasingly expect to interact with their accounting professionals the same way they run their businesses — from the smartphone in their pockets. And they expect fast responses to their requests. The good news is that accountants no longer have to spend most of their time doing manual data entry. As a result, they can instead focus on business strategy, value-add consulting and services.

Following are just some of the ways accountants can help you understand what drives profit for your business, and help put you at the wheel to make essential changes. (more…)

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